Surviving the Cincinnati Metro System

After many bus trips during my south of the boarder experience, I was pleasantly surprised the first time I set foot on the 81x that runs from the east side towards downtown Cincinnati. I was greeted by the cool breeze of air conditioning, the odorless air and an all around smooth ride as I was surrounded by a professional crowd.

I didn't expect things to be so nice.

But I quickly managed to screw things up on my return trip. I got the bus, threw the coin in the meter and took a seat towards the back - thus, ensuing the bus crisis of '09.

"Excuse me. EXCUSE me," the bus driver called from the front. "You don't pay when you get on. You pay when you get off. Now, how am I going to remember that you paid? Did everyone else pay? No. So now you better remind me that you already paid when you get off, or else I won't remember."

I think I saw a man shaking his head at me.

"Oh, you forgot. You have to pay when you get off the bus," scolded one of the women up front. "Not when you get on the bus, honey," she continued, making me feel a little less like an adult and more like a toddler.

I thought about telling her how she forgot that white socks do not look good sandals, but I thought better of it. I shut my mouth and kept it that way for the remainder of the uneventful trip.

Will I ride the bus again? Yes. In fact, I already have.

My Lesson of the Day: Don't go throwing your coin into meters if you don't know where it belongs.

Blog On

3 months. 93 days. 2,232 hours.  

No matter how I look at it, the number still amazes me.  That's approximately just how long I've been reliving in the U.S. after a winter abroad.  Coming back to the U.S. threw me into a bit of a culture shock.  Something I was not really expecting, seeing as I'd been through it before.  But somewhere between unpacking roughly 138 lbs. of luggage and going back to school at OU, the cold Ohio weather completely froze my blogging abilities.

But now I'm back.

I've realized that I don't have to be beyond the boarder to have an adventure.  After all, there are plenty of exciting things going on right in my own backyard, right?  Well, while the "whereintheworld" part of my blog may simply just be my own hometown, I'm determined to make the most of my time.  So here I am, back in the good ole' U.S.A., determined to blog on.

My Lesson of the Day: It's not where you are, but what you make of it.

Loosing my crutch

Today was my first day as the only student from OU in Merida.  Its like I took out the big crutch that was the program and am now living on my own.  It was just me and mama for lunch and then the two of us for dinner also.  I know I'll only be here for tomorrow but it gives me a really good look at what it would be like to actually live here in Merida.  Its fun to think about what my life would be like if I lived here full time.

On another note, today was my last day at the office.  I teared up a little when it came time to say goodbye.  Everyone there has been really great and they have made my experience here so much more enjoyable.  I took in some cookies and we all sat around talking about the last three months.  It's funny how much your life can change in such a short matter of time.  We laughed about how on my first day at the office I didn't even know how to get home nor how to tell them even if I did.  I think I've come a long way since then.

I assured everyone that they always have a place to stay in Ohio whenever they want to visit.  I think it would be fun to be able to show them around and I know they would like it.  They too let me know that I always have a place to stay in Merida.  I'm sure that one day I will be back to take them up on that offer.

While it was sad saying goodbye, I know that I will keep in touch with a lot of my coworkers and my boss Roberto too.  I'm excited to step foot back in the U.S. because I know I'll always have wonderful memories of my time here.

My Lesson of the Day: Its hard getting rid of that crutch after you've been walking with it for so long.

I hate saying goodbye! (and packing my suitcase)

It has finally hit me that my time here in Merida has come to an end.  All of the other OU students have left and my roommate leaves tomorrow, making me the only one left from the program still in Merida.  I realize that Sunday will be here before I know it so I have already started packing my suitcases, which is perhaps the worst part of leaving.  Do you know how hard it is to try to pack up the life that you are living and fit it into two suitcases weighing less than 50 pounds?  My only advantage here is that they weigh things in kilos, not pounds.  Therefore my suitcase is allowed to be 23 kilos, which is technically 50.6 pounds.  I need every bit of help I can get!

I have very mixed feelings about leaving.  On one hand I am very sad to leave this country and all my friends here, but on the other hand I am a little relieved to be coming back to the United States and to my family and friends there.  I feel like I've gotten to see a lot more of Mexico this year and while there are things I will miss, there are also things that I'm happy to get away from.  

One of the things I will miss the most is working here.  I feel like it has been a such a good experience and that it has really helped me understand everything better here.  Tonight I have my despedida, a little goodbye party that my friends from work are having.  I'm going to miss them all a lot but I'm excited to celebrate with them before leaving.

My Lesson of the Day: Goodbyes are very bittersweet

A look from the other side of the camera

The theme of my blog this year seems to be firsts, so here goes one more.  Today I had my first modeling experience.  Yes, me.  modeling.  Not at all what I expected to be doing on a normal Wednesday night. 

Anyways, the people at my work asked me to model for a salon because the salon wants to put an advertisement in our magazine but they don't have anything designed.  I agreed to go get my hair stylized so that we would  have pictures to include in their advertisement.  Little did I know just what I was getting myself into.

I've been to a few of the events with my work, but I've always been the one helping take the pictures, not the one in front of the camera.  However, the whole modeling thing started out pretty easy.  First, they took pictures of me getting my hair straightened.  Then the owner decided that we should get pictures of everything the salon has to offer so I got a manicure and my makeup done. Everything was smooth sailing up until this point.  Then it started to get a little weird.

I had to pretend like I was getting my hair washed and shampooed, even though we didn't do the real thing.  Then they covered my hair in plastic wrap and stuck me under a dryer so it looked like I was getting my hair dyed.  Finally, to top it all off, they had me lay down in the waxing room so they could pretend to wax my eyebrows and my upper lip, all the while snapping away pictures.  I really hope they don't end up putting those pictures into magazine.  At least if they do, I won't be here to see the magazine come out!

My Lesson of the Day: If there is any model out there who can make getting their lip waxed, I would like to meet her.

Are you reading what I'm reading?

Throughout my time here in Mexico I have seen a lot of funny signs in spanish.  For example,  a sign next to a cenote said "If you don't know how to swim, don't get in the water."  Another personal favorite are the signs on the side of the road that instruct drivers to "obey the signs."

However, nothing can top the number of signs I have seen here in English.  Before I write down some of the best that I have seen, I want to first let you know that I am in no way trying to make fun of those learning english.  There are great number of people here that speak english better than even I do.  That being said, most of these signs do make me laugh because they are written poorly in english.  Secondly, I want to add that I have photo proof  of all of these signs.  I couldn't make this stuff up even if I tried!

Ok, here it goes.

Inside of a cenote, a sign in spanish saying "dear visitor, wet stones are slippery.  Walk at your own risk"  was translated into "dear tourist,  wet stone are slepering.  thank you."

In the same cenote another sign in spanish saying "walk at your own risk" was translated two different ways: "precautions tourist, take care of your self" and "friend visitor, walk easily."

Walking up the stairs of a hostel, the low ceiling read: "Be careful.  Down Head."

In the bathroom, a sign telling people not to throw toilet paper into the toilet (yes, you don't throw it in the toilet) was translated to "Do not pull out the garbage in the toilet."

At the waterfalls there was a sign that read "Dangerous not to swim."  It was right next to the spanish version saying "dangerous to get in the water."  It was a little confusing to those who were bilingual and very dangerous to those who only spoke english.

Finally, my favorite of them all was not really a sign at all.  It was a list of rules that we found on the back of our hotel door.  I'll type out the list word for word, letter for letter and let you decide for yourself what they are trying to say.  Honestly, I can't even figure out a few of them.  Here they are, the hotel's rules:

1. The guest don't get in alcoholic drunks into the room.

2. The hotel is not responsible about values objects or documents lost into the room if these aren't protected on the hotel's reception.

3. If the guest is surprised doing a bad use into the room; painting walls or breaking an furniture, it will pay.  Please avoid us to report to you to the municipal's autorities.

4. If the guest lost the room's key, it cost will be $65 pesos mn.

5. If the guest take any thing of the room, like: towels, sheets, etc., it will pay double of its price and will be notified to the municipal's autorities.

6. If the guest smoke or inhale any toxic substance, will be reported inmediately to the municipal's autorities.

While all the rules are good, my personal favorite is rule number 3.  

I realize that some of you may not find these mistranslations funny at all.  I however can laugh because I know that I make the exact same mistakes when I translate into spanish.  The only difference is that I would check to make sure I had everything right before printing it on a large sign.

My Lesson of the Day: Some things just aren't easy to translate.

A despedida and a couple of caves

Saturday night we had our despedida, which is our farewell dinner with everyone in the program.  All of the students, the families and the teachers are invited to come to a dinner/dance/farewell to our time in Mexico.  This year marked the 30th year of OU's Programa Mayab so we had an excuse to celebrate a little more.

It was really nice to get together for dinner with the whole family and to see everyone from the program.  You can tell how much the families enjoy getting to spend time together.  I also enjoyed getting to see my mama and papa from last year, who I don't get to see nearly enough.

We spent Sunday by our newly filled swimming pool with all of the relatives.  We ate a picnic-style lunch and baked in the hot, hot sun.

Today (Monday) was a national holiday, which means no school or work in my case.  We decided to spend the day going to the caves of Calcehtok, which is Mayan for serpent's neck.  There are about 30 caves connected by intricate passageways, making these caves the biggest in all of the Yucatan.

The caves are located in the middle of nowhere, only marked by a small handwritten sign.  A guide can be found near the entrance and they are completely necessary if you want to make your way both in and out of the caves.  (Our guide told us a story about three guys that thought they didn't need a guide and ended up spending 3 days in complete darkness, during which they went crazy.)  We were certain to get a guide.  There were only 5 in our group so we joined up with another group of people to make 14 in all.  The guide

asked us which route to take: easy or extreme.  We chose extreme.

The first decent was pretty easy and very beautiful.  We took some before pictures to remember how clean we were going in because we knew we would be dirty after 3 hours in the caves.  If only I had known then how dirty we were about to get.

After getting further down into the caves, we lost the sunlight of the entrance and had only a flashlight each to guide our way through the complete darkness.  The guide took us deeper and deeper into the slippery cave system.  The further and further we got into the cave the more difficult each passageway between caverns became.  

At many points throughout the trip we had to squeeze between rocks, army crawl under passageways, climb up ropes and slide down muddy slopes.  It was certainly an adventure.  There were a few times where I didn't think I was going to make it through some of the

 passages. However, I would squeeze through only to have the guide tell us that the next passageway would be even smaller.  

All of the caves were really beautiful.  We saw cavern after cavern where our guide pointed out shapes formed by the naturaleza.  We also got to see many bats - some of which were vampire bats - a lot of their guano and a bunch of things left behind by the mayans who once inhabited the cave. 

Our guide also told us a lot about the Mayans who used the cave and the rumors of the Aluxes who still reside inside.  We weren't lucky enough to see any of these Aluxes, but who knows if they are out there.  

After 3 hours inside of the caves, a lot of our group was ready to head back up to sunlight.  The guide gave us three options:  1. we could take the tourist route  2. we could take an easy route OR 3. we could take the macho route.  Guess which one we took?

The macho route was also the quickest so we picked it.  It involved having us squeeze through what was the smallest passageway thus far.  And I mean squeeze through.  I really didn't think any of us would make it through but low and behold, we did and from there we could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

My Lesson of the Day: I am definitely not claustrophobic.